


Proof of Existence

by bellmare



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-26
Updated: 2013-04-26
Packaged: 2017-12-09 13:42:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/774862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellmare/pseuds/bellmare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The human heart is a machine. So, too, is he.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Proof of Existence

It's difficult, to wrap his head around the notion that his existence was -- is -- something unreal, something fabricated.

_Combat AIs. Asura Project. Programs._ Serph tests the words silently, feeling the syllables rolling across his tongue. They don't match up with everything he knows, with the five other tribes he's been struggling against for longer than he can remember. They don't match up, not with cold, methodical Gale or Argilla's compassion, with Cielo's carefree laughter or Heat's impulsiveness. Were they really all programs, he wants to know. Was everything a simulation. Maybe he's grateful, after all, for the atma virus.

(It makes sense, because before the virus, before the infection of the system, weren't they doing what they were programmed to, to fight against one another as mindless machines would? He doesn't remember pain or regret; everything was easily healed, easily overcome. Easily overwritten, he thinks, by restoring a few lines of code. The demon virus was just that -- a malign bug placed into a closed system, bypassing all encryptions.)

Roland makes it sound so simple; perhaps Gale understands, because he takes the revelations calmest of them all. He doesn't bristle like Argilla, betrays no emotion save for a narrowing of his eyes, imperceptible to those who don't know his habits. Despite the cool glint of green in his gaze, he is as unflappable logical as he always was -- before the virus, before Vayu. 

It doesn't match up, Serph wants to say, but instead rests his hand on Gale's shoulder. Gale surveys him, sidelong, and the taut lines of anger disappear from him. 

"I see," he says, contempt forgotten. Serph is glad for the cold, controlled calm of Gale's voice. "You needn't say anything."

Reassuring his subordinates, Serph thinks, is easier than reassuring himself. 

.

At first he thinks it's just a side effect of the virus, of having a demon in his head. Varna is easy to understand, though, in contrast with emotions -- Varna's desires are simple, easy enough to fulfil. It's a part of him he can understand, the more carnal instincts that command him to sate his hunger -- all Varna's interested in is eating, sleeping, hunting, surviving, fucking. A part of Serph envies him, because Varna is his escape, a reprieve from the memories of blue skies and the smell of the salt in the air. 

.

There are other parts of him, though, that aren't just Varna, whose thoughts roam restlessly through his mind in a hazy, tangled snarl. 

When he sleeps he thinks of warmth and sand, gritty against his skin.  _Dreams_ , Sera had called them, when she peered over his shoulder to read his logs. Dreams are illusions made reality. Dreams are where the repressed subconscious vents. Dreams, dreams are meaningless.

He'd watched as she traced the letters on the screen; she'd looked sad, troubled -- and it troubled him, too, to see the downcast curve of her mouth.  _Dreaming men are haunted men_ , she'd said.

He didn't understand, at the time -- not until he enters the counterfeit Nirvana, which seems far more cruel than the Junkyard ever was. He doesn't understand, not until he begins to dream of Varna crouched over him, teeth in his shoulder. It's Varna and yet not Varna at the same time, at once familiar and terrifyingly alien. This Varna doesn't nestle in his mind like his own does, calm and pensive -- instead it prowls through his brain, worries cold claws into his thoughts, whispers to him to kill them all, kill them all for their betrayal.  _Dreaming men are haunted men_ , Varna-not-Varna snarls, in a voice that sounds too much like his own.  _The human heart is a machine; you can predict any course of action it chooses to take. They're all machines; so, too, are you,_  the Varna that isn't his own whispers, and devours him piece by piece. It eats his head last and he jolts awake to feeling teeth closing around his skull, to carnassials cracking his bones.

.

He wakes up cold and trembling, to Cielo's heel digging into his hipbone; he finds himself curled against Gale and Argilla and his back hurts all the way down his spine. His shoulders ache and his neck is cramped but it's a small price to pay for having his comrades surrounding him, staving away the silence with the soothing rhythm of their breaths. 

.

(In his dreams there's only him and not-Varna. There is blood on the walls, the floor, blood congealing sticky and coppery in his mouth. The others aren't there and he wonders, fearfully, if he really killed them all.)

.

Sometimes, there's another Varna, tremulous and uncertain. Serph thinks he's going mad when he sees it hunched against the wall, pale bone plates bright in the gloom. It rocks back and forth, claws skittering across the floor. 

_Sera_ , this Varna sobs, and lifts its head to gaze sightlessly at him. Its voice is soft and faltering and edged with maddening desperation. Serph hopes he's never sounded like that before.  _Where is Sera?_

He doesn't know. He wishes he did. We'll find her, he wants to say, we'll find her, he wants to reassure the other Varna, the other man that wears his face. He doesn't believe himself.

.

There's a man with his face. Serph wonders if his eyes are really that cold, if his voice is really that cruel, if his comrades secretly believe he thinks about them as tools, nothing more than throwaway chesspieces to be used and discarded as soon as they've served their purpose. It's not true, not true he wants to say. He doesn't know who he's trying to reassure; himself, or his comrades.

He's forgotten what his own voice sounds like. 

.

He's going mad. That's the only explanation to it. He's dreaming of being haunted by ghosts and he doesn't know who he is any more, not when they wear his face and speak with his voice. 

.

But they're not him. They're not him, they were never him. He is Serph, leader of the Embryon and his atma avatar is Varna, god of oceans and of the dead. He is Serph, of the water crown and he always has been.

.

"You don't have to say anything," the woman at the counter says. Her eyes fall to his tag ring and when she motions towards it he curls his fingers instinctively, as if she'll prise it off his hand. No, no, she can't have that. That's the only thing he has left connecting him to the Junkyard, to his identity as tribe leader, to the months spent battling the Vanguards, to the meetings in the Karma Temple. They need money, though; this world, the real world, Nirvana -- it operates by different rules. Macca has no value here. So, too, do the remnants of the Asura Project, he thinks, running his thumbnail over the inscriptions on his tag ring. Aren't they just failed experiments, machines that gained sentience through faulty programming, inhuman soldiers comprised of lines of code and skeins of binary fighting useless wars in virtual worlds. Second best, they were always second best; Nirvana meant killing everybody else and being implanted into chips; Nirvana meant being nothing more than a steroid, an enhancement to actual living, breathing people.

But they're real living, breathing people now, aren't they? What defines humanity, Serph wants to know. What defines a person.

_Karma,_  Varna whispers back and this time it's his own demon, his own atma avatar that responds.  _A demon epitomises karma in its rawest, simplest form. Karma is the sum of your deeds in life._

If this is his karma, Serph thinks, he must have done terrible, terrible things before. What else can it be, what other explanation does he have for the long shadows crossing his mind, for dreaming about people with his face and his voice and his demon.

Strange, that he feels so attached to his tag ring; after all, it's just a useless chunk of metal now. It was precisely what marked him, as Serph, of the Embryon, as Serph, leader of the tribe.

Back in the Junkyard, though, it was different. An identifier, a proof of existence -- that's what it was, he thinks. They'd thought it strange, that Sera hadn't worn one. Somewhere, the long-dead gods must be laughing, he thinks, because now he's the stranger in the strange land. It's meaningless now, all meaningless. He wishes he'd gotten the chance to spend all the macca on it, first.

Serph glances back at his comrades, at Gale and Argilla. They'll have to get going soon; the hunger gnaws at the pit of his stomach and he knows it's only a matter of time until the solar noise washes over them again, until their hunger overcomes everything and they need to hunt again. There's so many things they need, now -- rations, bullets, healing salves and mantras to rebuild the strength that has ebbed from their bodies since leaving the Junkyard. 

He slips the ring off and lays it slowly, decisively in the shopkeeper's palm. "I'll give you twenty thousand for this," she says and he nods tightly. 

The money feels strange in his hands. Stranger still is the lightness of his index finger, the flesh pale from a missing band.

**Author's Note:**

> to think this started from me getting emotional at the very beginning of dds2 when serph sold his tag ring hahahahaha


End file.
